How to select and loop variables in a filename

I have monthly files with 2 variables: sst (jan_sst03) and time(jan_dt03) per file, how do I loop all my files such that it will take the mean of the sst variable only?

[Walter Roberson]

Are those mat files? xlsx?

Does the name of the variable change in each file? So the substring "sst" needs to be checked for?

[Sammy]

I figured this one out already. By making a timeseries of the files (jan2003-dec2022) (the names of the variable does not change). Then, using the time variable to find the duration or period to average the sst variable by, e.g. idx=find(mo==1), I can now average all the january months, making my january monthly climatology. (:

Answer 1

[Shree Harsha Kodi]

Folder = 'path_to_folder'; % Specify the folder containing your files
files = dir(fullfile(folder, '*.mat')); % Get a list of all .mat files in the folder

means = [];

for i = 1:numel(files)
    data = load(fullfile(folder, files(i).name)); % Load the data from the file
    sst = data.sst; % Extract the "sst" variable from the loaded data
    
    mean_sst = mean(sst); % Calculate the mean of the "sst" variable
    
    means = [means mean_sst]; % Store the mean value in the array
end

% Display the mean values
disp(means);

[Sammy]

Hi Shree! I figured this one out a year ago when I made monthly climatological means. But thanks!